Inside a secretive Ukrainian team launching deep drone strikes at Russia
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- The First Separate Center of Unmanned Systems, a secretive Ukrainian strike unit commanded by an officer using the callsign Charlie, launched multiple Fire Point drones from an eastern Ukraine farm field in roughly two hours — a process that used to take half a day and now resembles a Formula 1 pit stop, per NPR.
- Fire Point drones can travel between 800 and 1,200 miles and have struck oil refineries and depots deep inside Russia, including Moscow and Siberia; on June 18, Ukraine launched its largest drone offensive yet on Moscow, hitting an oil refinery as residents reported "oil rain" falling from thick black smoke.
- President Zelenskyy said on June 10 that Ukrainian long-range drones struck more than 356,000 Russian targets over the past year, with oil infrastructure described as "the lifeblood of the Russian economy" — and Russia's Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said Crimea is "being isolated by drones" and "in the near future" will "become an island."
- U.S. direct aid to Ukraine fell 99% under the Trump administration according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy's Ukraine Support Tracker, and U.S.-led peace negotiations have stalled because of the Iran war — forcing Ukraine to lean on domestic production.
- Russia intercepts most Ukrainian long-range drones, but enough evade air defenses to hit industrial and military plants; Russian media report fuel rationing in Moscow and parts of northern Russia as oil refinery output declines, though the Kremlin denies economic repercussions.
- George Barros, director of innovation and open-source tradecraft at the Institute for the Study of War, told NPR that Ukrainians can "on a near daily basis, launch hundreds of daily long-range strike vehicles into Russia that actually generate substantial damage and really do upset the Kremlin."
Why it matters: With U.S. direct aid down 99% and peace talks frozen by the Iran war, Ukraine has built a domestically-produced deep-strike capability — 356,000 targets hit in a year, drones reaching 1,200 miles — that imposes economic costs on Russia's oil sector, now reportedly triggering fuel rationing in Moscow. The burden of sustaining Ukraine's war effort has shifted almost entirely onto Ukrainian defense firms like Fire Point, whose technology is now the country's primary lever against the Kremlin.
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